


silhouettes of you

by seasalttears



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, Soulmate AU, because i am trash and they are so fucking gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 07:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15680679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seasalttears/pseuds/seasalttears
Summary: Berenice Wolfe studies the cracks in the pavement as she walks, hoping they might split open like ribs and swallow her whole. Cardiomyoplasty- it will wrap around her like healthy muscle from another part of the body can be wrapped around a failing heart- because her heart is broken, and she is failing.Or, a soulmate AU.





	silhouettes of you

**Author's Note:**

> wow!!! a soulmate au!!! new and original idea because this fandom doesn't have any of those!!! kind of? canon divergent because who cares!!! enjoy the trash and my hopeless romantic ways!!! title is taken from an isaac gracie song.

The night is cool, and the streets are haunted. Berenice Wolfe studies the cracks in the pavement as she walks, hoping they might split open like ribs and swallow her whole. Cardiomyoplasty- it will wrap around her like healthy muscle from another part of the body can be wrapped around a failing heart- because her heart is broken, and she is failing. Neon signs flash like gods across her face as she passes them and suddenly realizes she doesn’t know where she is or where she’s going. At this point, Bernie couldn’t tell you which one was worse.

She is lost, the one thing she has been hoping to find is nowhere in sight, never has been. She manages to get back to her flat, remembers it takes a lot more than furniture to make a house a home. She still feels lost. Sometimes she wonders what her life would have been like if she had married that man all those years ago, the one who already saw in color but had never met his soulmate- claimed he didn’t have one. Or if she stayed with that woman, the one she met in the army, whose soulmate died. Would she be happy? Would she have a family? In a house to come home to?

In the end, Bernie knows she could never give up the possibility of finding them one day, knows she was never willing. She goes to bed that night and dreams of vivid colors she’s never seen and eyes she’s never met.

 

It’s in the car park, of all places. The car park is where Bernie sees her first color and it is the brown of Serena Campbell’s eyes.

_It’s her, it’s her, it’s her._

Colors are slowly seeping into her vision from all corners and everything she imagined this would be couldn’t compare to the vibrancy she sees, the relief she feels, and Bernie knows Atlas had nothing compared to the weight she carried on her shoulders.

_It’s her._

Her attention snaps back to the woman in front of her and tries to see if she is experiencing the same thing, but her face gives no indication. Bernie falters and her expression turns neutral.

_Is that possible? Can she not-_

“I think you’re meant to light it.” Her smile is pleasant and polite and everything a smile should be when talking to a stranger. How can she call this woman a stranger when she has literally lit up Bernie’s world?

_No, no, no, no, no-_

 

Serena Campbell was so, _very_ tired of hoping. Long ago had she given up on finding the person who was meant to complete her, literally and figuratively. Years of doubt and rejection festered its way into her heart until there was nothing left. That’s not to say she didn’t have fun in the process- goodness, no. Serena Campbell knows how to have fun, inviting men and women into her bed to see if they colored her world slowly, like she knew it did for some people. Fireworks exploded in her head, but they were still devoid of color, and her world stayed dark and grey as they left and took all the hope she held with them. Serena Campbell knew how to have fun, but the world stopped seeming fun years ago.

It wasn’t until her car broke down and she saw a blonde stranger approaching her that she felt all her hopes and dreams bleed back into her heart.

_Blonde? Wait-_

And just like that, Serena’s world detonated into a vitality of color. The trees were alive, and the hospital was bright, and her car was… green?

-but oh, this blonde, leggy, woman is looking at her and she has never felt so alive and she is gorgeous, and she can _see_.

But Berenice Wolfe is looking away from her and her face is unreadable, and Serena feels disappointment wash over her in waves. She schools her face into something neutral and doesn’t let this woman see the desperation filling her eyes.

_This isn’t how this is supposed to go._

“I think you’re meant to light it.”

Bernie Wolfe looks at her one last time with some sort of emptiness and Serena feels like her life, once again, is slowly slipping away.

_No._

 

Bernie and Serena live their life in color, but they don’t see each other, and they don’t tell anybody about the color they can now see. Nobody knows that Bernie is disgusted by the maroon colored scrubs of Keller and nobody knows that Serena loves the blue of AAU. Nobody knows, and nobody asks when they have a slight pause, a hesitation, when they see a new shade, a new hue.

And then they become co-leads.

They are feisty, and they are flirty, but they are feisty. Meeting your soulmate and thinking they don’t feel the same, _see_ the same, really takes its toll. The trust is hard to build, and it takes time, but they are slowly learning to be near each other without actually being with each other. Forever stuck in Fermi’s paradox of color.

  
Serena begins to think she might actually be able to do this. She might actually be able to work with Bernie, be friends with Bernie, and not be with Bernie. She likes her, and Serena could use a friend, so she resigns herself to merely that.

And it all goes very well, but that damn back massage nearly ruins her. The feel of Bernie on her fingertips, the strong muscles tensing and relaxing under her ministrations is enticing and she finds herself wondering what Bernie’s skin would feel like under her hands, on her body, and-

_Nope, no. Definitely not. Just friends. Your soulmate is just your friend._

It’s not until Bernie lies for a patient, a boy she is drawn to, that Serena knows she is fucked.

“I don’t want it to affect us.”

Well and truly _fucked_.

 

Bernie thinks she has never been more frustrated in her life. Having to be around Serena everyday and know the brown warmth of her eyes without being able to talk to anybody about it is _so, goddamn, frustrating_. She tells herself they are just friends, nothing more, and one day, she thinks she might be able to live with that.

  
But that stupid back massage forces her to grasp at the ends of her self-control as she feels it falling away and she almost lets it. She wants her, and her brain won’t let her think about anything else other than the feel of Serena’s hands on her back, her body, and Bernie is realizing what people mean when they say that soulmates are an extension of each other. She comes to the end of herself and automatically reaches out for a hand that would fit so well with her own.

_Just friends, just friends, just friends._

They have never talked about soulmates, Serena has never mentioned one, and Bernie feels defeat and hope rising in her throat at the same time. She thinks one day, she won’t be able to stop it all from escaping.

She was right.

 

A day spent in theater, a day dancing around each other, and a whole day of having to ignore the grey hues of scalpels and the way fluorescent lights seep into each other’s eyes, distorting the brown and making them glint with something akin to love. The tension is high, and they snap at each other because they don’t know how else to communicate with each other without screaming about the way Serena’s blouse is Bernie’s favorite shade of blue or how Bernie’s hair shines golden in the sun, a halo of light that fills Serena’s night sky. A whole universe has opened up between them, constellations connecting them and galaxies taking up open space until there is nothing left between them but their own sacrificial ways of living. They’re martyrs in their own right, willing to lay themselves on the line but never telling each other why.

Bernie storms into the office with Serena right behind her, slamming the office door with more force than necessary, a cathartic act that does nothing to simmer the rage she feels.

“You shouldn’t have done that. You gambled somebody’s life, and it was stupid.” Bernie whips around and her face is steel, her presence filling up the room, a silent scream.

“He was _dying_ , Serena. What did you expect me to do? Let him bleed out on the table?”

“I expect you to have my back, and it’s become abundantly clear that you don’t.”

“Of course, I have your back, but sometimes I think you need to let the reigns go and take a risk every once in a while.”

“Take a risk? _Take a risk?_ Pray tell, what the hell you mean by that?” Serena is seething, and it feels good, to let this anger out. She is angry at Bernie, and she is angry at the world for giving her a soulmate that isn’t her soulmate.

“It means that you’re too careful, you follow the rules too closely.”

“Rules are there for a reason, so of course I’m meant to follow them! Something you clearly need to learn how to do.” She knows she struck a chord, knows she said something that is going to make Bernie Wolfe tell Serena Campbell exactly how she feels for once.

“And why should I follow the rules? Rules that have led me nowhere,” and Serena knows Bernie is no longer talking about surgery, knows that she is building up to a revelation that will break down the galaxies between them until there is nothing left, “rules that have led me to you, a soulmate that makes me see the color of your eyes and your hair and your lips that I can’t kiss because you don’t see me the same way I see you.” Bernie ends in a rush, and her throat feels clear, and she can finally breathe because the truth is finally out there, and the galaxy imploded and has left a black hole in its wake, one that is slowly threatening to swallow them whole.

Serena is frozen, because _this is my soulmate and I am Bernie’s soulmate._

“What?”

And Bernie laughs, honest to God laughs at the absurdity of it all, because Serena is barely saying anything and just keeps staring at her.

“I think you heard me, Serena.” And Serena did, she did hear her.

“Bernie…”

“No, it’s okay. I figured out a long time ago that you don’t feel the same way. It’s okay.”

And it’s Serena’s turn to laugh because Bernie thought the same thing, she thinks Serena can’t see the way her blonde fringe falls into her brown eyes as she looks up, and Serena _loves her._ She loves this woman with everything she is and everything she ever has been. But Bernie is pushing past her, she’s running away, and Serena reaches out a hand to stop her.

“Bernie, wait.”

And she does. She is waiting for a reason to stay. Serena gives her one.

“Bernie, I have been living my life in the colors I never thought I would see the moment I laid eyes on you in that car park.”

And all Bernie can do at this point is lunge at Serena and let her lips find their companion, because what else can she say at this point? She is her soulmate’s soulmate and she can feel the floor beneath her finally open up like the ribs she cracked six hours ago, and she is powerless to stop it. Doesn’t think she would if she could.

 

In the end, communication is their unspoken talisman, refusing to let the very thing that kept them apart break them up. There are new galaxies forming, new constellations connecting them, because nothing has never felt righter than this. Bernie Wolfe laments, cardiomyoplasty can screw itself, she is no longer broken, and she is no longer failing. She is complete, and she is on top of the colors that opened her to the world of Serena Campbell.


End file.
